Christian Dignity and Its Political Consequences

King Mwanga II ascended the throne of Buganda at the age of 16 on 18th October 1884. The 19th century Bantu kingdom, located in present day Uganda, was the focus of Christian missionaries during the Scramble for Africa. Traditionally, the Bugandan king's power was absolute, and that included pleasing his sexual appetite through the unyielding pages …

The Case of Slavery: How Christians Can (and Should) Go Beyond Scriptures

The 4th century saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote: You are condemning to slavery human beings whose nature is free and characterised by free will. You are making laws that rival the law of God, overturning the law appropriate for humankind. Human beings were created specifically to have dominion over the earth; it was determined by …

Freedom of Speech and Freedom to Listen

The concept of freedom of speech carries a lot of cultural baggage. It is perceived variously as a fundamental right of liberal democracies to an unwelcome Western import. Singaporean theologian Roland Chia argues that freedom of speech is crucial for an open society and a "discursive form of democracy", but also that: ...if truth is …

Silencing Scriptures through Inerrancy & Its Discontents

Debates on inerrancy tend to rest on two opposing principles. Inerrantists proclaim a 'high view of Scriptures' to accent Scriptures' truthful nature. Scholars denying inerrancy, especially those of a historical-critical persuasion, emphasize having a view of Scriptures rooted in how the text behaves. Such debates often end in a quagmire: the two principles are incommensurable since they rest on different systems of value-judgment. I'd like to approach this issue differently. These two perspectives, despite their superficial disparity, make a foundational assumption about truth, namely, they both assume that truth is correspondence to an external reality.

Simulcrum and Shadow: Reviving the ‘Anti-Christ’ Archetype for Geopolitics

The Temptation of Christ (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1–13) is a climatic portrait of confrontation between good and evil. Jesus, alone and starving in the wilderness, was confronted by the Devil who in a series of increasingly seductive snares, promised him food, immunity from death, and finally domination over humanity. The Devil figure quoted Scriptures (Psalms …

Sola Scriptura and the History of Biblical Bookmaking

Is the doctrine of Sola Scriptura conditional upon the technological mode of production of biblical bookmaking?

The Many Women of King David: Part 1 – Michal

The epic narrative of King David spans across 1, 2 Samuel and the opening chapters of 1st Kings. Confessional readers tend towards a didactic reading of the biblical text where David is touted as a moral exemplar, a role model, for the faithful to follow. A fair number of critical scholars, such as Steven L. …

Examining the functions of etiological markers in Joshua

Although traditionally claimed to have been written by Joshua himself, the virtual consensus of modern biblical scholarship recognizes that the Book of Joshua was almost certainly a literary product composed centuries after the events it depicts. One key set of evidence for this latter view concerns the oft-repeated phrase 'to this day' (Joshua 6:25, 7:26, …